On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 03:51:54PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote: > Quoting KatolaZ (kato...@freaknet.org): > > > Strange as it may sound to you, yes, there are still many users who > > are using i386 hw, and the only reasonable way for them to continue > > use those hw is by having Linux. > > While I'm sure this is true for some number of people, aren't these now > incredibly old computers? (I say this as someone still running his > flagship Internet server on an antique PIII, by the way.) > > [Long list of makers] everyone moved to a x86_64 flavour around > 2003-ish (or exited the market). So, I estimate that these computers > are at least 14 years old.
> I mean, I did install Debian m68k on an antique (circa 1990) Apple > Macintosh IIci -- 25 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU, 4MB standard RAM expandable > using up to 16 x 4 MB 80ns 30-pin SIMMs, SCSI 40MB hard disk -- and > you can still do that in 2017, but... really. Friends asked me how it > ran Debian, and I replied 'Well, it walked Debian briskly.' Both are in the hobbyist-only niche. Preserving old gear for future generations is a noble goal, but running newest eye-candy on hardware that old is not an effective use of a distribution's limited resources. > > All those users are being left without any other choice than throwing > > their hw away by many distributions, without a concrete motivation > > (well, except the usual "it's old so it must be thrown away", which is > > as popular as lame these days...) If you want a motivation, measure the juice taken by that i386 box. One I have (well, amd64 but from that era) takes 222W under light load or 185W when totally idle. Its replacement takes 15W with two disks attached. One Watt-year is around $1, depending on country ($1.25 in Poland, $3.2 in Germany). Another box from that era, this time 32-bit only, with an "energy efficient" model of Pentium 4, takes 110W idle, 170W under moderate load. I guess those Atoms take a lot less than that, but are also far less capable. Any of these can't hold a candle even to a modern ARM SoC. Thus, it's not that financially-limited people can't afford to upgrade. They can't afford to _not_ upgrade. They won't want an ARM, but an used x86 can be had for peanuts or literally free. Plenty of acceptable machines get thrown away. Meow! -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ A dumb species has no way to open a tuna can. ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ A smart species invents a can opener. ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ A master species delegates. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
